Test Tube Nails

And look what I found during my latest drugstore polish raid! Essie’s Shine of the Times. You know what? It spoke to me. It did, it whispered to me to pick it up and then is said:

I think I am slowly conquering my yellow nails. Last night I buffed them with whitening toothpaste and then gave them a mask of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide and I think they look a teensy bit better. Not as pink as I would like, but the yellow is about half grown out already. I wear a lot of dark polishes, and I have read that they are big staining culprits, but my yellow is from one time wearing OPI’s A-Taupe the Space Needle on bare nails. Never polish without protection! The top of my nails are nice pink, and I have been dutifully using OPI’s Nail Envy base coat since “the incident” so I think its working as yellow-prevention.

ZOMG! I love Spectraflair! I recently bought a bottle from The Frankenpolish Shop and it is totally amazing. They sell it mixed with a polish base as a super concentrated pigment; you just need to add a few drops to a mini bottle of polish to achieve a spectacular linear holographic effect.

These colours were so sparkly and bright, they reminded me of my favourite sugar coated jelly candies: fuzzy peaches and cherry blasters. I have been wearing them both as a diagonal tape mani and I can’t stop staring at all the rainbows on my nails!

My lightbox setup doesn’t capture the rainbow holo effect as much as it shows up in person, but you can see it in the bottle much better. Oooh shinies:

The recipe for the Fuzzy Peach polish is actually really really simple. I just filled a mini polish bottle about 2/3 full with Cherimoya Vernis Classique “Abu Dhabi” which is a bright metallic orange shimmer polish with gold highlights and coral red base. I added 3 drops of the concentrated Spectraflair and topped up the bottle with clear polish base.

I didn’t keep track when I made the Cherry Blaster holo, I was aiming for a more red polish, and ended up with a bright fuschia. I know I used a base of the OPI coral red jelly Guy Meets Gal-veston, to which I added many drops of different red polishes, and 3 drops of Spectraflair. The silvery shimmer of the Spectraflair really alters the look of the colours you add it to. It almost has the same effect as adding a small amount of white polish, so black turns grey, orange becomes peach, and yellow, trust me, becomes a wierd swamp-thing colour.

I had so much fun frankening with andothercuriosities yesterday! When I was putting away my supplies I noticed that one of my cheaper glitter polishes, 70’s Disco, from Ardene’s, was a mix of the same pink, red and blue glitters as Butter London’s The Black Knight. So this morning I was on a mission to make a dupe. After swatching TBK and taking a very close look, I noticed that along with the pink, red and blue glitter, there is also very fine silver and gold glitter suspended in the black jelly base.

Here are alternating swatches of Knight Fall and The Black Knight, each nail is one coat of black creme, and two coats of glitter polish, with one coat of clear topcoat.

I started out by filling a 5ml mini polish bottle about 2/3 full with Ardene’s 70’s Disco. Then I added about 8 drops each of  Ardene’s Rock n Glitter (a fine graphite-silver metallic glitter) and Claire’s Twinkle Twinkle (a fine metallic blue glitter). I added 6 drops of Wet n Wild’s The Gold and The Beautiful, which is a gold micro flake glitter, and finally, added Wet n Wild Black Creme till the base was tinted black.

Super closeup:

It is very hard to tell which nail is which in person, I think this dupe is worth trying if you have been lemming TBK and don’t have the polish budget for it. If you don’t have an Ardene’s in your area, I have seen some pretty good dupes made with a base of Sally Hansen’s Rock Star Pink, like this one from Lacquer and Lattes.

My fingers are so girly and pretty today! I watched a whole bunch of one-stroke nail art tutorials on you-tube and just decided to go for it. It isn’t that hard, but it does take some practice, which is perfect for the plastic-bag nail decals, because you get the whole surface of the baggie to make as many flowers as you want till you get it right. I used dark violet and white acrylic paint for mine, with accents of Quo by Orly’s Celestial Star. I would suggest using a thick freezer bag if you try this, as I used the thin kind and they were a little tricky to peel off.

For this manicure I started with a base colour of SpaRitual’s Lucid, which is a slightly blue-tinged pale lilac creme. Then I added a coat of Icing’s Call Me Glitzy, a clear iridescent glitter top coat similar to China Glaze’s Snow Globe.

To apply the violet decals, gently pry them off the baggie with a pair of tweezers, some will rip, which is ok, because on some nails you will want only half a flower anyways. Smooth them over slightly tacky nails with a soft brush, and clean the excess off with acetone. I used little ripped petals to add the illusion of more flowers, by tucking them into the corners of the design.

I finished off the design by dabbing over the violet decals with some CND Sapphire Sparkle, painting tiny green leaves with various green polishes and purple dots with Essie’s No More Film. The violet centers are dotted with Sally Hansen’s Sun Kissed. If you want, you could add a little crystal to the center of one flower on each hand for a sparkly accent nail. It is pretty amazing how well the clear coat edges of the decals blend into the background; once everything was covered with a coat of Seche, it was smooth and invisible.

You should try this! Having such complicated looking flowers, even on your dominant hand, is pretty exciting. It does take a little planning, but I just tested my leftover decals, and a few days later they are still pliable, so you can prep you decals in advance and pop one on your finger when the mood strikes.

OMG I love this manicure so much, please don’t ever ever chip!

If this looks familiar, it’s because I totally and completely copied this lovely tutorial over at Quite Polished. The only thing I changed was to add some blingy accent nails. I (sort of) followed a tutorial for individually placed hex glitter that Polish All The Nails is famous for… except I realized I was not going to have time to line them all up perfectly, so I relied on a silver base coat to hide my sloppiness. It really is very shiny anyways, and probably took half the time.

I used one coat (!!) of Essie Licorice for my black nails, and also the black dots. I hate the look of chalky nails, so I used 3 coats of Essie Marshmallow for the white, it is softer somehow. Marshmallow is too sheer for dotting, so I used my cheapo Claire’s white for that. The grey was 2 coats of Orly Color Blast Reflection.

This manicure is based on the unique colour palette Solarized, which was developed to be a low contrast, easy on they eyes, 16 colour set for coders. Mr. Test Tube Nails was trying it out the other day and it struck me as really modern and cool. It is hard to tell, but the base colour is actually a very dark teal, which is actually the darkest of the 8 greyscale type shades in Solarized.

To make the crisp lines, I followed the latest tutorial from the Beauty Department for DIY Nail stickers. Basically, you just paint some scotch tape with your polish, and when it is very dry, carefully cut thin strips and stick them on your nails. Easy, and super fun! I just kept adding strips of colour till I felt done, and then plastered everything over with a coat of Seche Vite. This mani is also a nerdy visual pun, as the colours were designed for lines of code, and I have made them into lines on my nails.

Colours used (and their HTML tags):

Yellow(#b58900): NYX Banana

Orange(#cb4b16): Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Sun Kissed

Red(#dc322f): NYX Strawberry Red

Magenta(#d33682): Essence Ultimate Pink

Violet(#6c71c4): ACO (Ardene’s) Violet

Blue(#268bd2): Essence Let’s Get Lost

Cyan(#2aa198): Quo Green Meadow

Green(#859900): Essence Lime Up!

Light Grey(#586e75): Orly Color Blast Reflection

Dark Teal (#073642): Nicole by OPI Khloe Had a Little Lam-Lam (worst named polish in the history of universe, which I am ashamed of owning, except for the fact that it’s a super gorgeous one coater)

PS: I never ever never do nail art on my toe nails as they are too hard to reach… because of my long model like legs, yeah that’s why I can’t reach them…. but anyhoo, I think these homemade nail stickers would be great for quick cute pedicure art, without all the bending over and swearing at your midsection or whatever. I must try this with all my leftover cuttings!

My nails today, inspired by the most awesome rose nail art ever over at Emerald Sparkled, and the flakie sponging technique I first saw on Pshiiit. Also maybe the Snow White themed everything soaked into my subconscious.

For my sponged nails, I used Essie Wicked as a base coat, and then sponged from the tips upwards with a teensy bit of Nfu Oh 51 and China Glaze Ruby Pumps. It is super fiery and vampy and sparkly in person.

Under the roses, I started with a base of OPI’s Designer De Better, which is a silvery foil with subtle rosy undertones that go very well with the other colours in this mani. I just blobbed on some rose shapes with a basic red, then used my dotting tools and a black striper brush to make the black outlines and add some different red polish highlights.

I live in Victoria BC, which has pretty much the mildest, most pleasant weather in all of Canada. We can get pretty obnoxious about it. Our city has many many streets lined with pink blossoming cherry trees, and its common to hear people bragging that we are shoveling petals while other poor schmucks are still shoveling snow. I know… bastards. But they are very pretty, and one of the things I love most about spring here. And petals really do swirl like drifts down the streets in April. They inspired this frankenpolish. I wanted something cherry petal pink, sparkly with little flakies to mimic the fallen petals, in a sheer jelly base.

I didn’t do a proper swatch, but I did use it to make a very pretty cherry blossom inspired manicure (please ignore the tip wear, this mani is 2 days in the lab old):

I used 3 coats of Petal Drift on my pointer and middle fingers, and there was still a hint of visible nail line. It was hard to capture the flakies on the nail. They are there, and they give a little extra flash of pink shine. My thumb is a different polish, a bright fuchsia from Essence, with China Glaze Fairy Dust on top.

Here are the ingredients for Petal Drift:

I filled an empty bottle with: 1/4 bottle of WetnWild Wild Shine “Sparked”, a pink glitter, 1/4 bottle Sally Hansen X-treme wear “Disco Ball”, an iridescent clear glitter, 1 tsp of Red Flakies from TKB trading, about 15 drops of WetnWild megalast “Tropicalia” pink. Just for glitter variety, I added about 20 drops of OPI Excuse Moi, but I could have left that out and it would still be pretty similar. I topped it up to the top of the bottle with Luster Base from TKB trading. There seems to be enough of the two glitter polish bases that everything stays suspended.

I had originally planned to use some large raspberry hex glitter from the same manufacturer as the emerald glitter I used in my last franken. Let this be a lesson that you should never trust an untested glitter, even if another one from the same company worked last time (test is at 24 hours):

The colour started bleeding off these, and leaving trails of pigment, as soon as I dropped them into the test container. I briefly shook up the container, and you can see there is enough pigment now in the test base to coat the glass with pink. Recollections brand Raspberry hex glitter is NOT colour fast in nail polish! Its cousin, the Emerald glitter, is still green after 5 days in its test pot.